[Minor Infinity War Spoilers to follow, though I don’t think discussing Thanos’s “plan” is much of a spoiler at this point, better to play it safe]
Okay, been seeing talk back and forth about Thanos’s big plan, both people saying it is the only way to achieve his goal (seriously? these people worry me. I really did not expect this to be a stance that people would honestly take) and people saying “why doesn’t he just double the resources,” and I have a few observations that have been bouncing around in my head that I need to get down so I’ll stop dwelling on the.
1) The main arguments I’ve seen against the “double the resources” are that it isn’t possible because PHYSICS! (as if the McGuffin on his hand somehow isn’t expressly capable of rewriting the physical laws of the universe, I mean there isn’t exactly a way to PHYSICS! what happens when he snaps his fingers) and that even if he could that would just delay the inevitable. This is disingenuous because
2) That’s all Thanos’s “brilliant” plan does. For his plan to work the way he seems to think it will he is assuming at, or near, 0% population growth, one death for each birth, more or less. Maybe the Titans had a really low birthrate and he doesn’t realize that isn’t the case for every species, because even taking out 50% of humanity within a few generations the numbers will be right back where they were. At most he is buying an extra few decades of resources on Earth, and I’m sure there are plenty of races with even higher birthrates than humans. That doesn’t even take into account he could be dooming some species for the opposite reason, too few people rather than resources.
3) In Thanos’s mind the “50% at random” thing is to be fair, because Thanos sees himself as fair, in his own telling of the tale he is the hero, after all, the only one with the will and strength to do what he has convinced himself must be done, but really it is probably the stupidest way possible to go about it. Making no allowance whatsoever for the age or gender(s) of the populations is just really dumb. What if his random 50% killed off more of the younger generations that the older of a species, or killed too too many of the childbearing gender(s) of a planet? He’d be dooming that species to a long, slow decline into extinction, especially in a low birthrate species.
This brings me to what I think would be the simplest solution to Thanos’s “problem” (because really, if you are the only on in the entire universe that sees a problem which is more likely, that you are uniquely gifted and the only one able to see it, or that you are trying to solve the wrong problem (like too many people using resources vs the misuse and/or hoarding of resources by a small segment of a population.))
Increase the number of habitable planets.
Not by creating new planets (so as not to offend the PHYSICS! crowd), but by working with what the universe already has using the immense cosmic power of the Infinity Stones.
Increase the number of planets in a star’s “Goldilocks Zone.” Adjust orbits of potentially habitable rocky planets or gas giants with potentially habitable moons. Tweak the energy output of a system’s star(s). And so on.
Tweaking the stars would also extend the amount of time that planets in a system could remain habitable. If you want to say that he can’t use the Time stone to turn back a star’s reaction (because PHYSICS!) then there are other ways it could be done. Use material from asteroid belts, outer solar system debris clouds, or already dead systems whose planets would take that much extra work to make habitable, to create something like reactor control rods to slow down the stars reaction rate or inject lighter material than it is currently fusing into the star to push back its fusion reaction.
Adjust the atmosphere and/or core of currently uninhabitable planets in a solar system to give them environments that would them settle-able by that systems species. Doing this to Venus and Mars in Earth’s system alone would more than double the available resources and living space available to humans.
All this would take a lot of effort, planning, and thought, certainly, but the Infinity Stones exist from a time before the current Marvel universe was born, are immeasurably powerful on their own and are made more or less... well.. infinitely powerful by being connected to each other. From what we know of in universe cosmic prehistory they can pretty much be assumed to be what caused this Marvel universe to come into being in the first place.To say they couldn’t shift a few planets or fix a few stars is to drastically undersell their phenomenal cosmic power.
What it does require, however, is someone who hasn’t convinced themselves they’ve found to only logical solution to a problem only they are wise enough to see.
In summary: People who think that Thanos’s plan is in any way defensible frighten me, and Thanos needs to be punched in his big, wrinkly, purple head, and I look forward to watching Carol Danvers do just that.
